Journey through software development

The Clean Coder : Saying Yes

The last entry of “The Clean Coder” was about saying “NO“, this time it is about saying “YES”.

This 3 letters word means a lot, especially in a work environment. Why ? Because saying “YES” is a commitment, weare giving our word to someone else. The book gives the 3 parts of making a commitment :

You say you will do it !

You mean it !

You actually do it !

This is what we imply when we say “YES”.

We all know it and this is why we often lack of commitment maybe without noticing it. You can recognize this by the use of the following word : need / should / hope / wish and many more. Here are a few examples :

“We need to get this done” – “We should make this” – “I hope to finish this by the end of the week” – “I wish I had time for that”.

None of these is a commitment and we, at least I, probably said every one of them without doing anything to fulfill the related task/work. It might sounds fierce but I think that without commitments, there is no trust.

Am I saying that we should always say “YES” and commit ourselves ? Not exactly. You should commit yourself only when you have the full control over the task you have to complete. But in the other hand that doesn’t mean that you cannot do anything to complete this task, you might not have the full power but you are not powerless.

“We need to get this done !” So what is the next step we can make to actually do it or at least to participate to its completion ? If you want to learn more on how to do things I can recommand you the book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen.

For example you are waiting for an other team to finish their work in order to finish yours ? What do you do about it ? Do you just wait or do try to help them ? Or maybe you try to abstract their part with a mock in order to continue. There is always something you can do !

A professional doesn’t have the power to say “YES” to everything but he certainly has to power to work toward it.